And this was a pretty big giraffe. There were three Africans in the back of this open Land Rover. And at that time I had the camera and I was trying to film all this. I was sitting in the passenger seat and the trouble is, Tommy was a pretty… Read More
The Africans had the loop and the long pole and I was filming. But he hit a hole in the ground that was dug by an aardvark quite deep. Well, this caused the Land Rover to come to a automatic stop. So three Africans went 20, 30 feet over our… Read More
Okay?… Read More
And as you were in the mountains at 7,000 feet and the deer running, you would bring your helicopter up, and I would fire this net gun over the animal, and then they would put the skids. It was usually quite angled. So they’d put the skid down and you’d… Read More
And so we use that situation, but that’s one reason I think that Wild Kingdom was successful that we got along well with some of the departments of wildlife around the country and around the world. Yeah. Read More
And it was great that we worked with local wildlife organizations often. For example, when we went to New Zealand the red deer is up in the mountains in New Zealand. And we knew from some research that there was a capture group, commercial capture group who would fly helicopters… Read More
And they started overpopulating the areas, especially the red deer up in the mountains. So we got involved with the head of the helicopter company who had a freighter anchored off doubtful sound down on the coast. And he had flies helicopters from there, and his people would catch these… Read More
And then break off the limbs at the top of the tree, which were quite small up there. Then the helicopter would come in about a hundred feet up, and come down and you would go from the top of the tree up to the skid of the helicopter. That’s… Read More
And I had to be very careful in how I suggested. I said, “Hey, that would never be the case in the world, “in reality.” So I had to keep them on that track of being real. And you’re walking a very fine line there. But I did have some… Read More
Typical filming day. Yeah. Well, we would occasionally on location, Don Meier was smart enough to say, well, let’s do three or four different programs while we’re in Africa or while we’re in South America or whatever or even out in the Western if we went to Alaska, we would… Read More
But it took a lot of research to find out who, what, where and when?… Read More
Now, were there things on the television show that you couldn’t do, but you wanted to do?… Read More
Were you constrained and telling stories?… Read More
During the Wild Kingdom period?… Read More
Yeah. Ah, let’s see. I think I was smart enough to leave. I made a lot of suggestions on programs, because I had already been to Africa and the Amazon and all that before I started Wild Kingdom, so I could add to that and make suggestions. And Don Meier,… Read More
What was the run of Wild Kingdom?… Read More
It was basically until about 89 from 1960, early 63 to about 89. And then Mutual of Omaha, by the way, had me on a program called “Spirit of Adventure”. And we did quite a few hours specials all over the world. It’s interesting that Mutual of Omaha began supporting… Read More
And I went to Lake Baikal. Did a story on Lake Baikal. We had some pretty fascinating programs. Read More
The question of course is, why did you leave the show?… Read More
Well, I was evolving and changing in my world. I never thought it was any big deal to be on Wild Kingdom. I really didn’t. I was doing things that I enjoy doing, and I wanted to try to perfect myself in other areas. And I went off in the… Read More